


When Moving Through Kashmir

by LaCidiana



Category: Life on Mars (UK)
Genre: Dark, Gen, Gen Fic, Post-Apocalyptic, Psychological Drama
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-13
Updated: 2011-10-13
Packaged: 2017-10-24 14:13:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,250
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/264362
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LaCidiana/pseuds/LaCidiana
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam's world collapses around them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	When Moving Through Kashmir

**Author's Note:**

> Alternate events following _Life on Mars_ ending; disregards all _Ashes to Ashes_ canon.
> 
> My first completed Life on Mars fic! A million, trillion thank-yous all around to margo_kim for beta-ing, edzel2 for Britpicking, and to burningvigor and arcapelago for multiple in-progress reads and constant writerly support. ♥

_All I see turns to brown, as the sun burns the ground_  
_And my eyes fill with sand, as I scan this wasted land_  
_Trying to find, trying to find where I have been_

\--

He remembers it like a distant dream, before his kingdom crumbled, when coppers and robbers were the only law and logic his world required.

He remembers that day in the station, which started out like any other. He remembers Chris fumbling through an ocean of papers while Ray looked on and laughed; he remembers Annie carrying evidence bags with ginger fingers, and Sam watching her, talking with her, wearing that smile he'd only started using since that tunnel months ago.

Maybe, Gene thinks, that should have been the first omen of things to come: Sam Bloody Tyler finally acting like a normal sort of bloke.

It happened at 2:17, though he didn't know it then. He was looking at a case file, and he'd remember later -- the weight of it, the dog-eared feel of it, the solid sound it made against his desk. "Ursula Winters," it was labeled. He never forgot that.

His door opened. He glanced up.

"What?"

Chris stared at him, but it wasn't a proper look, exactly -- straight at Gene, and straight through him. His hand clenched the doorknob like a boy's fingers on a gun. His face was white.

Gene's eyes flicked back to the file. "Skelton, if this is about that bird of yours--"

"It's bad, Guv," he whispered.

It wasn't the look on Chris' face that did it, but the silence. A dead silence, hanging in the air; no papers, no doors, no footsteps, not even a toilet flush. Just the muffled crackle of a radio from the other side of CID.

He remembers rising to his feet, shouldering past Chris, seeing his team gathered around the thing. He remembers approaching, slowly, and no one looking toward him, no one looking at anything. He remembers--

_"...no accurate reports on the number of casualties at this time; estimations range between five and ten million. The Kremlin is expected to make a formal declaration of war against the United States and its allies within the hour--"_

"Chris," said Gene, "get the fucking phone."

_"--while American troops and relief rush to the bomb's blast area. Parliament is set to convene for an emergency meeting on the matter of the Royal Forces mobilizing against the Soviets..."_

"This isn't supposed to happen."

The voice was small, like a child's. Gene's eyes waded through the haze to rest on Sam, hunched over, staring at the ground, pressing trembling hands to his knees. Then, even quieter: "This isn't real."

And that's how the world crumbled.

\--

The blanket around Sam's shoulders makes him look bigger and smaller against the flickering light of the fire. Gene watches him from the side of the car, arms crossed both for show and to keep his hands out of the cold. His fingers reach for his inside pocket before he schools them back to stillness; no use, that. He snuffed out his last fag weeks ago.

Sam drags the heel of his boot through the dust before shifting and standing.

"I'll take watch."

Gene looks off, appraising him out the corner of his eye.

"Not your turn."

Sam scowls, rubs his arms under the blanket. "Yes it is. Stop acting as if I won't notice."

Gene raises his eyebrows; not an admission, just a reply. Sam clenches his fists around the edge of the blanket and yanks it off.

"I know you like to think I'm some useless nancy _girl_ ," he growls, "but I can take--"

"Fine, no need to light your knickers on fire." Gene tosses the keys at him and marches round their camp to settle down on the pile of old towels and sheets they've fashioned into a rat's nest on the warehouse floor. He tears off his ragged coat and pulls it over his front as he flops down on his back with a whump. "I'll count bleeding sheep, even."

Sam glares at him, but says nothing. The firelight hits his face and Christ if he doesn't look like a ghost, all skin and bones and ashen constitution.

Gene rolls over and shifts against the rags.

"Just don't fall asleep this time, you jessie."

\--

Sam falls asleep. He curls up in some barmy half-stand, half-lean position between the Cortina's door and side mirror, and Gene watches as he gradually sinks to the floor under the weight of unconscious exhaustion.

"Annie," he mumbles, nearly a whisper, clutching his jacket to his chest. "Annie, I'm sorry, Annie..."

Gene knows these sorts of dreams and wonders how his own might look if he closed his eyes on the concrete floor. He wonders if he'd see Ray yelling to get the hell out before burning wood crashed down on his shoulders; he wonders if he'd hear Chris cough out _"Guv"_ between wheezing breaths and fingers sticky with grit and blood. He wonders if Annie would haunt him too, pale and pretty in a serene, eerie way, with Sam holding her, pressing his face to her hair, shaking and screaming an animal noise when her hand fell from his face to the ground.

Gene wonders if he'd see these things and raises his eyes to the dark ceiling hanging over them. He swallows down a dry patch in his throat and wonders, because he can't quite remember what sleeping feels like.

\--

A rustle of dirt and clothes distracts Gene from the saucepan in front of him. He looks to Sam, who coughs and stares blearily.

"Suppose I slept," he mutters.

"Too bloody right you did. Howler's roast _duck_ , we nearly were." Gene swishes the saucepan back and forth, more for show than any culinary mumbo-jumbo. It does the job; Sam perks up and fixes his eyes on the lumpy concoction as if it's one of his a-la-Tyler dishes of yore.

Gene glances up, like he's just now noticed his DI's become a half-starved mongrel of a man. He shoves the pan in Sam's direction.

"Eat up," he grunts, plopping their crooked spoon in the mix. "So I have a sodding reason not to kick your innards up your throat for being a stupid, stubborn _tosser_."

Sam reaches for the thing like a grown-up bastard Oliver Twist and then pauses, glancing to Gene with strange eyes.

"Aren't you having some?"

Gene nudges it forward another inch.

"Already ate."

When Sam frowns, Gene meets his eyes with a hard stare.

"Innards. Up your _throat_ , Tyler."

The threat must sketch the right image in relation to Sam's needs, because he snatches up the pan and digs into the stuff without further argument. Gene leans back on one hand and thumbs his hip flask with the other; there's still a gulp of single malt left in it, sloshing around like rainwater. Gene knows he's saving it for something dire: pain, or thirst, or a last-ditch pause in an unwanted conversation. Once, he'd not a clue what that conversation might be, but now he has an inkling -- a horrible, clawing suspicion -- and in certain moments, it's only the slosh of that malt, back and forth, that calms his blood from turning cold in his veins.

"Huh," Sam says through a mouthful.

Gene's eyes flick up.

"What now, Doris? Need a glass of warm milk?"

Sam can't be bothered to retort, it seems, as he rummages with his free hand through their pack of supplies.

"Thought we had less water." A smile twitches the corner of his mouth. "Suppose we're lucky for once."

"Gene Genie," Gene says, automatically. Fatigue hits him suddenly, like a sack of lead to the stomach. Sam gives a dogged nod.

"Gene Genie," he echoes, as if he knows what it bloody means.

\--

When they leave camp, it's without attachment or remorse. The warehouse has a roof, which makes it a sight better than some of their previous one-star abodes, but it's big, and drafty, and unprotected as an inmate's arse. They were never in any real danger last night -- not any more than usual -- but Sam doesn't know that, and Gene doesn't bother to correct him when he starts packing up the Cortina and mumbling half-formed ideas where to head next.

"Market. Whatever's left in one, anyway," Gene hears as he shoves their less piss-stained bedding into the backseat. "God, never been so happy for cans. Preserves. Would hate to see the healthy living aisles at a Co-Op now, yeah? Organics wouldn't've lasted a week -- expensive rotting meat, expensive rotting produce -- yuppie's sodding nightmare--"

"What in God's great arse are you on about, you miserable _git_ \-- move _over_ ," Gene growls as he shoulders into the driver's side and lets Sam settle out of his idiot babbling. There's a horrible moment when Gene turns the ignition and the radio crackles to life; the emergency broadcast loop beeps out its single useless line, and Gene reaches forward to wrench the bloody thing off.

Sam catches his wrist. His nails dig into Gene's skin and Gene looks up to see him breathing shallow, eyes widened at an unknown monstrosity.

The moment stretches like cold, suffocating glass; unease grips Gene like rising water.

"Shall I turn it up, see if they play a bit of McCartney," he demands, shattering it. Sam startles, loosens his grip. He drops Gene's hand and leans against the window.

"No," he mumbles, like it's a bloody revelation. He presses a hand to his eyes. "No, they won't. Hasn't changed in months."

After a day's scavenging, they spend the night in a rusty garage littered with oil puddles and old parts. Gene settles on the floor for a couple hours of feigned sleep and opens his eyes when the police radio fizzes and cracks.

"Please," he hears, "I didn't want this. I don't want this," and Sam's voice is so small and powerful, like that day in the station, when Ursula Winters and dog-eared files became a thing of the ancient past.

"Someone _answer_ ," he whispers, and when Gene leans up, he sees Sam's head against the dashboard, hand quaking on the receiver.

\--

The thing is, the end of the world should be messy.

It dawns on Gene as he stares out the windshield, wipers moving back and forth against the ash. There should be bodies -- no, there should be _living_ \-- proper living, like children on streets and beggars on sidewalks, or bent military bastards running about like little Hitlers. There should be martial law and painted symbols; fights and theft and ration lines; despair and hope in unequal measures. There should be _people_.

But there aren't. There's sodding Howler gangs out in masks and rags, but they don't count for much more than dogs off leashes, and even _their_ existence doesn't make an ounce of sense. Gene and Sam find enough scraps for Sam to get by, so why would some hooligans join Club Cannibal like they were handing out samples of Raquel Welch?

 _Enough for Sam to get by,_ says a voice in his head, and a cold weight settles in Gene's empty stomach, because it's the little things that do it.

It's always the little things.

It's how he can tell from scouting a room if supplies are stuffed behind a wall, or how he can judge from holding a can whether its insides are rotten. It's how his car's fuel gauge never falls below empty, how his clothes never stay filthy, how his body never loses its weight. It's how the blitz of his youth evokes photos instead of feelings, how he can't remember his rookie days beyond what he's said out loud. It's how he can't picture the stone on his brother's grave, or the ring he gave to a woman whose name escapes him.

It's the little things that aren't little at all, and it's why he fixes his eyes on the road and keeps driving straight ahead, like he's trying to outrun a truth too horrifying to survive. Like he's trying not to look at the man beside him, staring out the window like a king at his wretched kingdom.

\--

"Dammit, Guv, _drive!_ "

"I'm bloody _trying!_ "

The Cortina's front tires grind and squeal against a swath of mud and dead roots. Gene stomps on the accelerator and wrenches the car into reverse.

Beside him, Sam grips the seatback and stares out the rear window, breathing with rattling, feral terror. Gene can still picture the dark figures scuttling toward them from the end of the street, their knives and clubs and rotting teeth--

" _Guv!_ "

The wheel dislodges and they rock back over the curb, slam back onto cobblestone. Gene sucks in a breath and shoves the thing into gear, gunning it down the street.

"God," Sam says, still facing the fading danger. He swallows. "Never seen so many."

"Makes you wonder why they don't munch on each other," Gene says over the Cortina's engine -- and he _has_ wondered. Too bloody much.

Sam turns and raises his eyes back to the windshield. Dark shadows and grey light flick back and forth across his features; he settles back into the seat with each rock of the car's suspension, his body limp, face slack. Relaxed-like, except he's got a look about him he's carried more and more often of late, one that sets Gene's teeth on edge. Blank, numb -- hollow, almost -- like nothing's left in the world to hope for, like a dead man. Like a no man.

A sudden fire shoots up in Gene, from his gut, to his chest, to his fingertips on the wheel. He veers violently to the right and Sam's head knocks against the window, smashing the stupid buggered look off his bastard face. Sam yowls, and Gene stares forward. Always forward, at the road, at something predictable. Solid.

Sam hisses, rubs his head. "The hell was _that_ for?"

"What? You think this is a rare breed of pothole- _free_ apocalypse?" Gene shoots back, but it must be too fast, too angry, or maybe not angry enough, because Sam gives him a hard look that requires Gene to roll his eyes and add: "Poof."

Sam balls his fists. "Don't fuck with me, Gene. I've had too much in this world fuck with me."

 _This_ world, Gene hears, but he tries not to, and instead lets out a big, nasty laugh. "Yes, and it's been a stroll through the queen's bloody gardens for the rest of us."

Sam's breath hitches, like it's caught on something, and then a look crosses his face, an ugly sneer Gene's only seen on cold blaggers and twisted murderers and his transferred Hyde DI.

"Yes, actually. It _has_ been."

The brakes shriek and rattle like a cage through the soles of Gene's feet. He's got Sam's shirt in his hands before he properly knows how, and his breath comes out harsh and hot through his teeth.

"They're _dead_ , you whore-mothered piss stain, and so long as we _aren't_ \--"

"Aren't we?" Sam says, through a short little laugh. Gene's grip tightens. "Aren't we _all_ here, dead, no way to get back--"

" _You'll_ be if you keep prattling on like a lunatic _bastard_." Gene's fingers twist in the thready cloth of Sam's shirt, and he's overwhelmed by the coarseness of it, the texture, the sheer bloody _detail_. He realizes he's been craving it -- that kind of detail -- and it's comforting, almost, to know there's a visceral need still left in him.

Sam yanks away and the shirt tears a ribbon that trails out of Gene's grasp. Sam purses his lips, as a boy might, too stubborn and small to admit to fear.

"I'm already dead," he says. "Or dying. I'm the only one dying, and I'm bloody sick of it."

A chill slides down Gene's spine. One of his hands grips the gear shift, presses into it and feels nothing but its surface, smooth and intangible. "You're not dying and you're not quitting, you nancy _scum_ , not after everything they did -- after _Cartwright_ \--"

Sam's head snaps up.

"Don't you talk about her."

"Then don't piss on her body like a mangy _dog!_ "

Gene's fist slams the dashboard, and the impact feels cold, thrumming like a gunshot through water. Sam stares back at him, a wounded edge to his numbness. His breaths shake; his shoulders tremble. Gene feels his fist unfurl, hears himself growl hoarsely: "Christ, Sam, we're stuck in this mess together--"

"Together?" The injury vanishes from his face, and Sam's mouth twists into an off-kilter smirk. Laughter escapes his throat like air from a drowning man. " _Together?_ Bloody hell, it's like you actually believe it."

"Why shouldn't I?"

He doesn't realize his words until he says them, until they sink from the air like an anchor to ground. But he keeps still, and stiff, and glares back at Sam because he can take this -- can take any words his DI stabs him with, because he's come to realize over the past few months that the things Sam Tyler hates are the things Sam Tyler is.

So he lets it hang. He lets Sam's smirk fall. He lets him look away, lets him raise a shuddering hand and press it to his eyes.

"Why are you still here, Gene?"

Gene doesn't answer. Sam shrinks into his seat.

"Even the telly girl's gone," he whispers before Gene can slap him upside the head, "so why are _you_ still _here?_ "

Here. As if it's something significant. Secret. Sam's always been like that, Gene realizes, a fevered half-thought tearing through his head. He's always known _secrets_.

It occurs to Gene, in a sudden burst of lucidity, that the Howlers should have caught up by now, that the Cortina should be defenseless and swarmed except that it's not. Here he bloody well is, but if Sam's already saying it, he doesn't need to join in with a sodding chorus line.

So instead he grumbles: "'Cause you'd be a dead man otherwise," and starts putting the car into gear like that's the end of it.

But Sam's never been that stupid. He's never been that easy. From the first day he walked into Gene's life, he's been a constant source of push-and-pull, of trial and conflict, of headaches and fist-aches and shouting matches. He's been living, breathing, feeling, _fighting,_ and it's been so long that Sam's acted like that -- fought like that -- that Gene's not prepared for the tiny voice that breathes out: "Oh, God."

Gene glances over to see Sam staring, wide-eyed, like a lad, like a fucking child with the lights turned out. "That's it, isn't it?"

"That's _what?_ " Gene rumbles, foot on the brake, ready to _leave_ , because this feels dangerous, it feels bloody _dangerous_ \--

"'Come on, Sam; keep up, Sam; don't make a lazy arse of yourself, _Sam_ '." Sam breathes hard, nearly wheezing, hands clenched into fists on his thighs. "Keep being the same bastard DCI in the same bastard city, keep me going, keep me _alive_ \--"

Gene snorts. "You _would_ think I'm here for your own bloody benefit."

"No, Gene, no." Sam shakes his head, and his solemn desperation cuts Gene short, leaves him staring right back. "Don't do this to me -- I'm not stupid. I notice things, Gene -- I've _noticed. Things_. Do you understand me?"

Gene finds his eyes fixed on his knuckles, clenched bone-white on the steering wheel.

The engine hums. Ash falls on the window pane. Sam's eyes go dark, weighed down with something worse than the world around them.

"Of course you don't," he mutters, like Gene's not even there. "How could you? How could a thing like you _notice?_ "

Gene's fist connects with Sam's jaw and Sam goes hurtling against the dashboard, but Gene doesn't see, Gene doesn't care, because he's already out of the car and walking, stumbling, running from something that's finally caught him and torn him to pieces.

\--

He finds himself somewhere, as he often does. He knows this place, and if he thinks hard on it -- if he tries -- he can recognize the car park ahead of him, the steps underneath him, the concrete walls on either side. Behind him lies a building that used to be home, where he used to have a family of sorts, a team he looked after like children. Except they've gone now -- they've all gone except for a bastard of a man who hated them, who still hates him.

The things Sam Tyler hates are the things Sam Tyler is.

He looks down at his hands, trembling like looseleaf paper. He can't stop it, like he couldn't stop anything in this whole mess of a world -- this world, _this_ world. What good is a copper, he wonders, who saves no one at all? What came first, a woman named Ursula Winters or her case file on a DCI's desk?

He reaches for a flask in his pocket, pulls it out and thumbs its edges. Something sloshes around inside, something rare and important, something he's been saving.

"Gene!"

He looks up. A figure runs toward him from the fog inching in on the car park, too thick to see through, to think through. The man climbs the steps to where he's sitting, crouches in front of him to peer into his face.

Gene studies this man, creator and destroyer wrapped in tired skin.

He looks back to his flask.

"This was important..."

" _Gene_." Sam grabs his shoulders and digs in with his fingers, but it doesn't hurt -- like he's not here to feel it. "You know, don't you? Christ, you _know_."

"I'm a detective, aren't I?" Gene grits his teeth, raises steeled eyes, and asks: " _Aren't I?_ "

It's the silence that does it, like the day this all started. Not Sam's face, open and red-eyed and staring back at him like Chicken Little with the sky falling down, but his silence, profound and damning in the biting cold.

Gene looks away, at the broken station lamp at the top of the stairs.

"How long have you known?" Sam asks hoarsely, because the little shit's never managed to learn tact. Gene shakes his head.

"Since I stopped craving bean cans. Stopped passing out on rag-piles." Gene glances down at his fingers as they uncap the flask. "Maybe since the day you walked into my department like you owned the bloody place."

"Except I didn't," Sam breathes. His hands tighten on Gene's shoulders. "I didn't own it, because you're real, aren't you? You've worked it out and you're still here, so you must be _real_."

Gene looks up at Sam, so alone, so desperate -- like he always was before that tunnel, and after that radio broadcast.

He closes his eyes and puts the flask to his mouth; he drinks that last bit of single malt, lets it draw out his pause and linger on his tongue. He opens his eyes again and catches sight of the welt on Sam's jaw, already purpling at the edges. From his fist, his choice, his single mark on his transient Maker.

"You're _real_ , Gene," God says, voice cracking.

Gene looks him down. He shoves him away.

"As if I'd let you decide."

\--

The fog's nearly gone when they get to the car, a wispy mist on the edge of Gene's vision. Husks of buildings stand around them; splintered woodbeams, shattered bricks. Survivors, half-broken, carrying on in silence.

He leans his arms on the Cortina's roof and squints up at the burned-out sky. He can taste the ashen air, smell death upon it. He hears his own words before he speaks them.

"Could you bring them back, if you wanted?"

Behind him, Sam's footsteps go quiet.

He heaves out a breath.

"No. Not enough left in me."

Gene turns to look at him, and it should feel different, with all he knows, but it's just Sam who stares back at him with big Sam eyes -- just as slight, just as pale, just as much a poncy DI with bastard big ideas and little sense to use them.

"Right," Gene says. He opens the car door, swings himself inside. "Some bloody use you are."

Sam's brow creases. He walks around the car, peers at Gene through the passenger's side.

"If would, if I could. You have to believe that. I'd do it in an instant, I--"

"I'm sick of ash," Gene says. He wrenches his head around, turns to glare at Sam. "I'd like some _sun_ , Tyler, if that's not too bloody cheerful for you to manage."

Sam stares back at him. "Gene, I don't--"

" _Sun_ ," Gene growls, "or you can dig up some other sodding bloke to give you a sodding ride."

Sam's mouth twists into a scowl. He grits his teeth and grates out: " _Look._ I don't know what you take me for, but that's the whole bloody _point_. I can't just..."

He trails off like the gloomy fairy he is, gaze fixed on some far-off location. Gene narrows his eyes and leans over the seat, ready to yank him in by the collar, smack some sense into his fear-addled face -- and then he sees it.

The broken station lamp at the top of the stairs, flickering, glimmering, a point of light in the hazy darkness.

\--

 _Oh, pilot of the storm that leaves no trace, like thoughts inside a dream_  
_Heed the path that led me to that place, yellow desert stream_  
_My Shangri-La beneath the summer moon, I will return again_  
_Sure as the dust that lufts high in June, when moving through Kashmir_


End file.
